


All That I Have

by arisaema



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, Fluff, Introspection, M/M, Spooning, botanist armin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 13:27:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1349047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arisaema/pseuds/arisaema
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Armin is up late, appreciating his favorite things. </p><p>Written for a Tumblr prompt asking what it is Armin treasures (here it's science, heretical family heirlooms, and Eren).</p>
            </blockquote>





	All That I Have

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [untitled](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/41434) by Celori. 



> I couldn't get amateur botanist Armin out of my head after seeing that beautiful fanart, so here's my version of that headcanon.

It was late. Late enough for Armin to smell the green wetness of dew in the air outside through the open window at his elbow. He set his book down in his lap and arched his back, stretching against his chair and yawning. He leaned lazily out onto the windowsill and breathed in the night. The stars were bright pinpricks of white gathered in the velvety black upside-down bowl of night above him. He felt calm. From where he was sitting, he was safe (safe enough, anyway) behind the stone walls of the building that was acting as Survey Corps headquarters. Headquarters seemed to be wherever they could find space for it, these days. From his viewpoint, he couldn’t see even a hint of the tall walls that guarded him. Only mountains, only sky.

It was reassuring somehow, not seeing the walls, and the irony of that wasn’t lost on him. Not much was. He wasn’t quite ready to sleep yet, so he idly watched a bat flit from tree to tree for a while before turning his gaze back indoors. Eren was asleep on his side in a messy bundle of tangled sheets in the bed across the room. He had already been asleep when Armin had come back late from his war council meeting, and he hadn’t moved much since then. His eyebrows were slightly less tightly bunched than usual, his mouth only turned down a little, his hands in loose fists at his chin. This meant he was sleeping more soundly than he normally did. Armin smiled at that and turned his attention back to the book in his lap.

It was worn. The once blue binding was now ragged and grey. The silver of the embossed title,  _Wildblumen von Deutschland_ , was barely still pressed into the cover, and the pages were faded and tattered, but that just made him love it more. He ran his hands over the page he was on, the page he’d been studying for the last hour, trying to commit it to memory.  _Klatschmohn_ , read the heading in German at the top of the page. Underneath, in Latin (a language that made his spine tingle with its age and the feel of it on his tongue), it said  _Papaver rhoeas_. The Red Poppy.

The specimen Eren had given him earlier that day lay on the table, starting to wilt in its 8th hour of having been plucked. Armin picked it up and twirled it in his fingers. Its soft, gauzy petals fluttered as they spun. He smelled it, but it didn’t smell like much. That didn’t matter. It was beautiful, and new, and his. He tucked it in the crease at the center of the spread and turned the page, pressing the flower into place. Its stem poked out between the pages, one of many that had left lumps in the book. They were the slowly drying bookmarks that marked moments in his expeditions. Each flower he’d found out beyond the wall had noted a hard won victory, a slow kiss, a funeral there was no time to have.

He all but closed the book, letting himself look again at the inscription on the inside front cover of it before shutting it altogether.

_“To our son, with love, behind the wall and beyond it.”_

The corner of his mouth pulled itself upward as his fingers traced the loops in the S for the thousandth time. He shut it gently and slid it in the satchel on top of the 3DMG at his feet. He tucked it between the tactician’s notebook Erwin had given him and his army issued canteen-all things he’d need to grab fast, if it came to it.

He rose, leaving the window open to let the cool of the night into their room, and padded as softly as he could over to the bed. He climbed gingerly in next to Eren, trying not to wake him as he wriggled under his arm. Eren stirred enough in his sleep to tuck his knees tightly behind Armin’s, making a low, contented noise as he nuzzled his face into the hair at the base of Armin’s neck.

Armin felt Eren’s grip around him tighten, and he smiled, leaning into it. Eren breathed in, shuddering a bit, and settled back into sleep. Armin laced his fingers into Eren's, pulling their hands to his chest. He took a deep breath of his own, filling his lungs with the cool scent of almost-morning dew and the dark sweetness of Eren: all that he had, all around him. He closed his eyes, letting the slow comfort of sleep pull him down, and breathed it all back out into the night.


End file.
